Aching fingers, concrete toes

Editor’s note: Wild West columnist Christopher Reynolds is spending the first week of his holiday ankle deep in cold Mississippi mud. He’ll return on Jan. 11. Today’s columnist, Craig Childs, is the author of four books on the Southwest, the most recent being “The Way Out: A True Story of Ruin and Survival.” Childs lives in Crawford, Colo., at the foot of the West Elk range and the staging point for his numerous forays into Anasazi country.

THE RAINSTORMS THAT HAD PINNED US DOWN FOR two days finally let up. We peeled off ponchos and looked up from our mud-bath camp at the foot of Arizona’s Sierra Anchas. A canyon opened above us, visible for the first time through rags of clouds, a gateway into this highland wilderness.

In the damp morning, we peered into this canyon -- a portal of cliffs broken from the mountainside, a jagged mouth opening above our heads -- looking for a way in. Bands of fresh snow marked its highest tiers.

Gathering enough gear for a quick day hike, we fled our camp, a woman and two men giddy to be free. We scrambled among ledges and massive bays of stone, moving along by hand and foot, gripping the small, slick holds.

Cold waterfalls plunged into mist around us. Water dripped along our arms and into our sleeves as we reached ahead, patting our hands on the wet rock for our next holds. Our pant legs hung like bells, soaked to the seams.

There was no way to stay dry, but at the end of the day, we knew we could count on returning to camp and slipping into fresh gear.

We had heard that a cliff dwelling lay ahead. Rumors had passed between wilderness travelers -- word of an elegant stack of buildings 700 years old tucked up in these drenched palisades. We had a map with us but never pulled it out. What could it possibly tell us that we could not see with our own eyes?

We reached hand to hand, helping each other up. Our breath rolled hard into fog as the day began shrinking toward evening. We moved faster, realizing we were cutting it close.

Late in the day, we still had not found the dwelling. We climbed a block of stone toward the back of the canyon, getting nearer to the hoods of snow above us.

Finally, there it was -- this abandoned masonry village trussed into the cliffs, a quarter-mile away on the canyon’s opposite side, separated from us by steep thickets of maple and scrub oak, standing on top of a stairway of naked ledges.

Evening raked at our heels. Our hands were black with mud. We were nearly out of food and wearing everything we had. No one spoke as we passed a pair of binoculars back and forth. If we turned back now, we would reach camp before sunset and start up a pot of water for tea. We would gather around a small fire and eat a warm meal. We would retire to our sleeping bags, glad not to be trapped in some icebox canyon.

Leave it be, we thought. Leave it be. If we tried to reach the dwelling, we would be stuck there for the night. In spite of our best instincts, we slowly began the climb. If any of us thought it was a mistake, no one said anything.

We reached the dwelling in the last light, sunset filtering through streams of heavy mist. We stepped through a low masonry doorway. Roof rubble and broken pottery covered the floors. We moved with delicate steps, our shoulders jacked up around our necks to keep warm, hands tucked into our armpits.

One doorway led to the next and the next, a hive of ancient rooms barely tall enough for us to stand in. Some ceilings were partly intact, and the haze of our breathing drifted up to their massive, soot-blackened timbers.

When night came, we sat in one of the rooms. A few hours of conversation went by, us laughing, telling stories, talking about the best meals we had ever eaten while digging the last nuts from a bag. Our voices were low but excited. We knew that what lay ahead would cut a deep notch into our memories. No one spoke about fear.

We ran out of words and moved closer, arms and legs interlocking, inhaling the flavor of each other’s apprehension. We fixed our eyes on splintered roof beams, watching the stars wheel through holes in the ceiling, using them to mark time. Come midnight, any motion stirred the frozen air. We made fists out of our aching fingers, toes hard as concrete in their boots.

It’s just one night, I kept thinking. Just one night. I finally stopped watching the stars, and my mind drifted like a ghost in darkness.

All of us live this way, unsure of what we will witness. With eyes open or shut, we fall into every moment, balancing risk and caution and sometimes jeopardizing everything just for a different taste of this world.

After the stars had turned and turned again, a pale light seemed to drift down through the broken ceiling beams. I unraveled from my companions and staggered across the rubble-strewn floor, balancing deliriously at the edge of hypothermia. At one of the exterior doorways, I stopped. A vibrant pink line floated just above the horizon.